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Telegraph
16-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Game of Thrones' Natalie Dormer is spellbinding as Anna Karenina
Natalie Dormer 's ability to combine fire and ice, nestling strong emotions within an impassive demeanour, is glimpsed to spellbinding effect in this period-dressed staging of Tolstoy's 1878 masterpiece Anna Karenina. The Game of Thrones star's transfixing turn as the titular heroine, the wife of a government official who risks everything by falling for the wealthy army officer Vronsky – played in this version, directed and adapted by Phillip Breen, by Seamus Dillane – is reason enough to catch the Russian classic on the Chichester main-stage this summer. But Breen's fleet, bustling approach – turning a heavyweight tome into a near three-hour whirl of incidents – risks upstaging its strong cast; the momentum becomes a distraction in itself. Tolstoy's epic affords a rich, sweeping view of Russian society on the cusp of modernity, saliently taking in the philosophical and reformist concerns of the landowner Levin (well played here by Dormer's real-life partner David Oakes). Yet on paper and in this production, it's still dominated by the impetuous Anna. It's ideal casting for Dormer. On screen, she has excelled at women forging their own path in patriarchal societies (Anne Boleyn in The Tudors, Margaery Tyrell in Game of Thrones). And her Anna is forceful but vulnerable: she drips disdain for her dully respectable husband (Tomiwa Edun's Karenin) but stirs our compassion in making a clandestine visit to the young son she has been forbidden from seeing. She could triumph as one of Ibsen's heroines – the miserably married Hedda Gabler, or the restive then fugitive Nora in A Doll's House. Breen encourages these Ibsen-oriented thoughts with Max Jones's cluttered design which suggests a child's nursery invaded by perturbing dreams. Tolstoy's famous opening line – 'All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way' – has made it into the final cut but the script often feels like a galloping resume, with the dialogue inclining towards declaimed soundbites. Naomi Sheldon's Dolly (Anna's unhappy, cheated-on sister-in-law), left aggrieved and exhausted by the demands of child-bearing, even vents a modern explosion of expletives. The propulsive and cursory approach leaves the novel's profound and wry psychological interiority on the shelf. No sooner has a milieu been created than it's disassembled. Paddy Cunneen's pleasing compositions, performed by three Japanese musicians, add to the kaleidoscope of moods, with wistful waltzes, nagging strings and accordion wheezes. A train-whistle screech becomes a doomy motif too. Amid the teeming theatricality, Seamus Dillane (son of Stephen, another Game of Thrones alumnus) doesn't get enough chance to smoulder as Anna's seducer Vronsky. Instead of going to bed, the pair chastely paw at each other upright, the jilted Karenin forming part of the tableau. Elsewhere, amid the ensemble lurks Les Dennis, whose comic skills are harnessed to play a garrulous old servant. At one point he gamely simulates a carriage ride using a rocking-horse. The ostentatious device indirectly sums up an uneven evening that strives to blend accessibility with dashes of avant-gardism. Laudably ambitious, but over-loaded.
The Guardian
15-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Anna Karenina review – Tolstoy's tragedy fizzes with theatrical brilliance
The stampede of actors making their way from screen to stage continues with Natalie Dormer's return to the boards as the lead, tragic figure in Leo Tolstoy's story of one aristocratic unhappy family. She is exceptional in the part of Anna, inhabiting the boldness, insecurity and anger of the discontented wife seeking her freedom through romantic passion. But there is little chemistry in her relationship with Vronsky (Seamus Dillane) – the rakish military man for whom she leaves her loveless marriage, and he is a non-character, left uncoloured. Phillip Breen's adaptation of the novel is however, always original, without playing fast and loose with the story. There is an inspired use of music, especially in the sound of a weeping or skittering violin. It is theatrically daring, with the ensemble sitting on regal seats when they are not performing, and a loose, handsome set, designed by Max Jones creates a sense of desolated opulence. Modern language is set against the period setting and dress. 'Marriage, I'd rather stick pins in my eyes,' says longsuffering wife, Dolly (Naomi Sheldon), summing up the kernel of Tolstoy's story in vernacular. The intention, it seems, is to bring these characters closer home to us. But the emotional life of the story seems rather too surface-bound. Scenarios and relationships are infused with a high wire kind of comedy which works to amuse, but it keeps the drama from gathering tragic depths. And there are too many directorial tics and flourishes which are clever but blithe. The set has the sense of a child's nursery, with Dolly or Anna's children playing with toys around its edges. It is one of Breen's clever flourishes, relating to the weaponising of children within marriage – particular in the case of Karenin (Tomiwa Edun), Anna's spurned husband, who enacts his vengeance through their son, from whom Anna becomes forcibly estranged. The production glows with the ambition of reflecting the full scope of the novel, from the era's discoveries – electricity and trains – to social divides, to arguments around love v marriage, and the moral relativism of Russia's gilded nobility. But it feels simultaneously brisk and too long, at three hours, in trying to cover so much. It strives to capture the psychological acuity of the novel too. Characters talk their feelings aloud so we hear what they feel and what they say. It is a heavy-handed way to animate their inner worlds: a 'telling' over dramatising, with an uncertain note of comedy. There is a convincing fractiousness between unfaithful husband Stiva (Jonnie Broadbent, a mischievous wastrel), and Dolly; Sheldon gives a compelling performance of marital regret, her outcome an inverse parallel to Anna's social shaming. Together the characters encompass the catch-22 for women marooned in bad marriages – they suffer whether they walk out or stay. But the modern language sits awkwardly when it is underlined in Dolly's verbal meltdown, bringing a maelstrom of F-words in inner monologue. The relationship that sparks most on stage is that between Levin (based on Tolstoy himself, played by Dormer's partner David Oakes) and Kitty (Shalisha James-Davis), from its humour to its tenderness. Anna's outcome is foreshadowed from the start with a barrage of theatrical devices: music that mirrors the noise and speed of a train, a child's wooden train set at the front of the stage, and characters performing locomotive sounds, including hoots that sound like screeches of pain. They lay out the ground for Anna's terrible end across the train tracks. Except here, there is only a vague symbolic suggestion of it. Those who know the story will see the subtlety but those encountering it for the first time may be left with an approximate idea of what has happened. You do not feel its tragedy, perhaps as a result, nor the emptiness of Karenin's vengeance on Anna, which leaves his son bereft of maternal love. Instead, you admire the production for its sometimes brilliant ideas. Anna Karenina is at Chichester Festival theatre, until 28 June
The Guardian
09-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘A gift of a role for a mother': Game of Thrones star Natalie Dormer on playing Tolstoy's tortured Anna Karenina
It was back in 2019 that the role of Anna Karenina was first mentioned to Natalie Dormer. Six years, many screen roles, one pandemic and two children later, Dormer is finally set to take on the titular role of Leo Tolstoy's epic as Phillip Breen's adaptation comes to Chichester Festival theatre. The delay has ended up working out well, says Dormer, since Tolstoy's characters are at the 'cutting edge of technology'. The new railways were transforming Russia, and that wasn't all. 'Electric light!' exclaims Dormer. 'We talk about it in the play, how that's going to revolutionise their lifestyles. That trepidation about new technology is so adaptable to today: the terror of the AI train that's coming our way. That generation of adults in the story – they're on the precipice of a futuristic world. I think we can identify with that.' It's only a few days before the first preview of the play, after five weeks of rehearsals, and Dormer is speaking from her dressing room over Zoom, a rail of costumes behind her. She had two children during those years she waited to play Anna. 'It was a gift to become a mother before playing this role,' she says, pointing out that Breen's adaptation has 'really zeroed in on her guilt and grief, realising that she replaced her maternal love with amorous love – and that, ultimately, was her undoing'. Of course Dormer, who is 43, could have played Anna – the respected society woman who leaves her husband and son for her lover – without being a mother. 'I'm sure other actresses are more than capable of getting themselves there,' she says. 'But for me, being a mother has fleshed out this performance. We change and grow, with life experience, travel, relationships, loss, grief. As you get older, your opinion on life, on yourself, changes. Good drama at its core is about analysing the pivotal moments in life where that the corner got turned. If I played Anne Boleyn now, I would play her differently to when I was 26, because I'm a completely different person. That's the interesting thing.' Dormer's screen roles have been high profile – Anne Boleyn in The Tudors, Margaery Tyrell in Game of Thrones, Cressida in The Hunger Games – but she loves being back in the theatre. It was her first passion, lit by childhood trips with her grandmother. 'To come back to the stage after seven or eight years, to be involved in a piece that has ambition for big, pivotal, defining emotion – I feel invigorated by the process.' She loves the camaraderie, particularly of this production, which features a large ensemble cast (including her partner David Oakes), musicians, and children from a local youth theatre and their chaperones. What's it like working with Oakes? He plays the wealthy landowner Levin, she points out, and their stories are separate. 'We have the perfect setup. He walks into rehearsal, I walk out. He walks on stage, I walk off. So it's the best world of working together, but not working together.' At home, she says with a laugh, they practise their lines, because there are just so many of them. 'It's good to have a scene-running partner. 'Just before you turn off the light, darling, could you just run these two scenes with me?'' Her Anna is, she says, a 'proto-feminist' although she knows it can be contentious to inflict modern sensibilities on period pieces. The historian Hallie Rubenhold recently criticised the BBC for The Scandalous Lady W, its adaptation, starring Dormer, of her book about Lady Worsley, the 18th-century aristocrat who caused a scandal with her affair and elopement. Speaking at the Hay festival last month, Rubenhold said that, much as she enjoyed the experience, she was 'slightly uncomfortable' that Dormer's character was portrayed as feminist. 'I really feel for academics,' says Dormer, with a smile (she nearly studied history at university, but went to drama school instead). Ultimately, her job, she explains, is to flesh out the character, 'make them as three-dimensional and human as I can' – while choices about historical accuracy are made by others. 'You can try and steer it,' she says. 'I fought for Anne Boleyn to be more overtly evangelical, and educated in the reforming revolution that was happening in northern Europe at the time. She was a true reformer, so I fought to get one speech in that nodded to that.' Dormer, who grew up in Reading, was an only child until she was around seven, and she remembers playing alone a lot, pulling out clothes from her dressing-up box and talking to herself as different characters. As an adult, she says, 'there's always, for me, been a catharsis in storytelling. You're trying to work out life. You're trying to work out pain and anger and extreme joy. It's a way of navigating feelings that are put so neatly into structured stories for us by wonderful writers, that makes them safe to explore.' In Anna Karenina, those feelings amount to: 'Holy fuck, the world is crazy. It's scary, and what world are we giving to our children? That's one of those themes that makes it universal and timeless.' For a long time, Dormer has supported the children's charities Childline and NSPCC, and in recent years has been involved with their campaigns on online safety. Dormer rattles off numbers, such as the more than 80% rise in online grooming of young people since 2017, the one in 14 children who have shared naked or semi-naked photos online. She doesn't do social media, despite being advised early in her career that she should. In the frenzy following Game of Thrones, and the huge boost to her profile, she could have picked up millions of followers but decided not to. 'There's a fork in the road when you're in something of that level,' she says, 'and I just kept my head down.' Privacy has always been something Dormer has guarded, but she did think about doing social media recently, then stopped herself. 'I can't quite bring myself to – until tech platforms take responsibility for their irresponsibility towards young people.' If there is a through-line in Dormer's work, it's that many of the women she plays have been constrained by their times, and the expectations placed upon on them, but have strategically made it work for them (Anne Boleyn, Margaery Tyrell) or broken free entirely (Anna Karenina, Lady Worsley) – even if many ultimately met an unpleasant end. In a new film, Audrey's Children, due to be released in the UK this year, Dormer plays Dr Audrey Evans, a paediatric oncologist, who defies sexism and outdated thinking in the late 1960s to pioneer cancer treatment for children and the care of their families. Then, in the upcoming drama The Lady, about the royal aide Jane Andrews who was convicted of murdering her partner in 2001, Dormer plays Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, another woman navigating the clash between society's expectations and her own excitable personality and reckless choices. Has the choice of roles been deliberate? It was always about the quality of the part, says Dormer, and whether she wanted to work with a particular writer or director. But she adds: 'If there are reccurring themes, then yes, they must be deeply embedded within me.' Dormer also points out how scripts for women have become much more interesting. 'When I started 20 years ago, that devil/whore v angel character was still prevalent.' Female characters are allowed to be antiheroines these days, she points out, with unsavoury personalities and questionable actions. 'That's a revolution in itself.' I wonder what it was like to work with Madonna, who directed her in her 2011 film W.E. She laughs: 'I can't tell you – the NDA was that thick.' She holds her thumb and forefinger wide apart. But she does acknowledge that it was something she couldn't have even dreamed about as a child growing up in the 80s, with her dressing-up box. 'One of those moments when you catch yourself and you go, 'How did this happen?'' It's the same feeling, she says, when she stands on stage at the Chichester Festival theatre, her face on the posters outside. 'So whatever you're beating yourself up with today, maybe just enjoy it for a moment.' Is she hard on herself? 'I increasingly try not to be. I think when I was younger, yes. Now, not so much. I've learned compassion for myself, and [had] a lot of good therapists. Understanding how you treat yourself is a mirror to what your children will emulate.' There's nothing like being immersed in Russian literature, I suppose, to make you question life and its meaning. 'Life is transient, as Tolstoy would tell us,' says Dormer with a smile, 'so just enjoy this moment.' Anna Karenina is at Chichester Festival theatre until 28 June
Telegraph
30-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
BBC drama ‘rewrote history to turn scandalous aristocrat into a feminist'
The BBC rewrote the story of an 18th century heiress to wrongly paint her as a feminist heroine, the historian Hallie Rubenhold has claimed. Rubenhold, an award-winning historian, was delighted when her biography of Seymour Fleming, styled Lady Worsley, was turned into a BBC Two drama starring Natalie Dormer. In a case that scandalised society in 1781, Seymour left her husband, Sir Richard Worsley, to elope with his best friend. Sir Richard sued for damages and the case became a sensation when Seymour revealed in court that she had taken many other lovers. This 'devalued' her in the eyes of the law and Sir Richard was awarded only a shilling in compensation. The BBC told this story in The Scandalous Lady W, which aired in 2015. After years of speaking diplomatically about the adaptation, Rubenhold confided her feelings to an audience at the Hay Festival. She said it was 'spine-tingling' to see her work transferred to the screen but went on: 'It is an act of negotiation. For me, one of the most difficult things about that was the desire to make Lady Worsley into a feminist when she absolutely was not a feminist. 'She was a rich heiress who wanted her money back. And she did what she could to get it back. 'She wasn't doing these things for the good of womankind or anybody else other than herself, and there was this desire to frame her as a feminist so she could speak to a modern audience, and that made me slightly uncomfortable.' Rubenhold shared the stage with fellow historian Joshua Levine, who was a historical consultant on Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk and Steve McQueen's Blitz. The pair discussed the historical inaccuracies found in film and television period dramas. Levine singled out Downton Abbey for its 'really modern characters with modern attitudes who are very anti-racism and very inclusive, and it's really frustrating to watch. It's nice, it's cosy but it's not right.' Rubenhold reserved her greatest ire for a Hollywood blockbuster. 'I absolutely cannot stand Titanic. I hate everything about Titanic. I really was glad that Jack died,' she said. 'James Cameron was so obsessed with the technicalities of the ship – moment-by-moment, how it was sinking, how at this point it split in half, at this point that collapsed, these people slipped that way and this room flooded. 'Why did nobody pay any attention to the believability of the characters? Because these were not characters from 1912. The entire plot was just stupid.'
Yahoo
29-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Ami Canaan Mann on Directing Natalie Dormer as a Heroic Real-Life Doctor in ‘Audrey's Children' and What She Learned Watching Her Dad Direct ‘Heat'
'Audrey's Children' — in theaters Friday via Blue Harbor Entertainment — tells the true story of pediatric oncologist Dr. Audrey Evans (Natalie Dormer), who upended medicine with a new treatment of Neuroblastoma, an often-deadly childhood nerve cancer, all while standing up for herself in her field and caring for her young patients. With a script from Julia Fisher Farbman, the film is directed by Ami Canaan Mann, whose storytelling extends to many different genres in both features (the romantic drama 'Jackie & Ryan,' the crime story 'Texas Killing Fields') and television ('The Blacklist,' 'Power,' 'House of Cards'). Mann opens up about the documentary that influenced her style on 'Audrey's Children,' the role that inspired her to work with Dormer and what she learned working on the set of 'Heat' with her father, Michael Mann. I was sent the script, and there's a scene where the main character, Dr. Audrey Evans, is talking to one of her patients, a child at the hospital, and she's trying to help this child understand their own mortality as a mode of preparation. I thought to myself when I read that scene, 'My God, no adult wants to be in that position with a child, particularly a child whose life you're trying to save, and you're aware that you may fail.' I just thought it was such an egoless thing to do, and she did that as a pediatric physician daily, for decades. To me, that's real heroism and somebody whose story I would like to tell. More from Variety Blue Harbor Acquires U.S. Distribution Rights to Historical Biopic 'Audrey's Children' (EXCLUSIVE) Natalie Dormer, Assaad Bouab to Star in Celyn Jones Thriller Series 'Minotaur' (EXCLUSIVE) 'The Wasp' Review: Naomie Harris and Natalie Dormer Play Old Friends With Fresh Grievances I heard an interview with Peter Weir, who is a hero of mine, and he was talking about casting, and he was talking about how the idea is to discern the spirit of the character that you need in order to pull the narrative forward. Casting is really trying to figure out which actor can embody that and already has that spirit. Meryl Streep can do absolutely everything, and every one of her characters has an essential Meryl that she carries with her. For Audrey, I knew we needed somebody who had an emotional and intellectual passion and fire. At the same time … it sounds counterintuitive, but her spirit could also hold incredible softness and empathy with children. I saw the remake of 'Picnic at Hanging Rock' and there's a shot of Natalie and she has this power in her shoulders, and at another moment she turned very slowly to the camera. I was like, 'Oh, that's her.' Weirdly, my biggest reference might be Barbara Kopple's 'Harlan County, USA,' in the gritty realism, the textural symphony that she has in that film. It's a documentary, but it's a deep dive into a very specific world with incredibly human characters and a humane ethos towards the narrative overall. That's really what I was trying to go for in terms of the visual lexicon of this movie, that it was a textural world that felt like a real world. If it felt visually consistent because of the subject matter, it would be easy to go in a way that was a little bit too soft. If you can make the world visually consistent and compelling, perhaps the audience would want to stay with you through that hour and a half. That was the puzzle. That was the directorial challenge. Part of that was the visual language of film, making it seductive so that you wanted to be there. All of that was informed by it essentially being a character study. The criteria was anything that happened visually in terms of shot design, performance — I'm a pretty camera-heavy director because I come from a photography background — so all the composition, everything was coming from an awareness of the character herself, who just happened to be a woman who was pediatric oncologist, who happened to work with kids who had cancer. It was a story about a woman, a brilliant thinker, and watching how she moves in a flawed, and sometimes not flawed, way. It wasn't so much words of advice, because my dad and I just talk about dad-kid stuff. We actually don't talk about films a whole lot, and I knew I wanted to work with him on one movie from the beginning to the end. The timing worked out so that it happened to be 'Heat.' I didn't actually work for him, I worked for the line producer as an assistant. He had another assistant who did assistant-y stuff, so I was sort of the, 'Ami, go figure out the gyroscopic helicopter mount, now go figure out the infrared, coordinate with people in Folsom Prison so we can send Bob and Val to go there to interview inmates.' I eventually directed second unit. What that did, though, was allow a distance from the show, from the directorial heart of it, but just close enough to see everything. Watching an A director move from beginning to end through an entire project, and watching that project evolve and watch his approach to it evolve … not so close that I wasn't seeing everything I could see, but not so far away that I couldn't watch that trajectory. Watch the trailer for 'Audrey's Children' below. 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